Better With Two?
by chocolatequeen
Summary: The Doctor said he'd never leave Rose behind, but then he did-and not in Aberdeen, but on a spaceship three millennia and two and a half galaxies from home. A conversation the next day sends him scrambling for explanations and apologies when she confronts him with how that made her feel. Part of As Time Goes By-post GITF conversation.


The Doctor hoisted himself up from underneath the console, groaning a bit when he rolled his shoulders. There was more he could do, but six hours was too long to stay hunched over like that.

It was also too long to go without seeing Rose. He rubbed at his chest, trying to ease the ache left by yesterday's close call. He'd wanted a little bit of space after he'd nearly told her how he felt outside the cafe earlier in the week; he hadn't reckoned on three millennia and two and half galaxies.

Before he could dwell too long on that, his stomach reminded the Doctor that it had also been six hours since he'd eaten. He half-hoped to find Rose in the galley, but the room was empty. However, from the tray laid out with the crusty bread she liked and her favourite cheeses, it seemed like the TARDIS thought he should take her something to eat.

After adding plates, napkins, and two bottles of cider to the tray, the Doctor left the galley, trusting his ship to take him to Rose. He wasn't surprised when she led him to their favourite room—the library.

The Doctor pushed the door open with his elbow. "I come bearing food," he said grandly, setting the tray down on the coffee table. Rose's lips turned up in a smile, but it wasn't the wide, tongue-touched smile she usually gave him. He pushed that concern to the back of his mind and sat down next to her.

Rose filled a plate and opened her cider. "Thanks, Doctor. I didn't realise it was so late."

"I lost track of time, too," he said.

She huffed. "For a Time Lord, you sure do that a lot."

"Oi!" he said. She only raised an eyebrow, so he kept up the faux indignation, hoping to make her smile. "I'll have you know, Rose Tyler, that I am a Marquess of Minutes—no! The Duke of Days!"

Instead of laughing, Rose's lips pressed into a thin line. "Whatever you say."

A rock lodged itself in the Doctor's gut. Rose was only this brusque with him he'd really upset her. _But she was smiling when we said goodbye to Sarah Jane…_ That brought with it the uncomfortable memory of the conversation he'd overheard between the two women, and he quickly refocused his attention on his meal.

They ate in silence, while he tried to figure what he could have done, since they'd barely talked in forty-eight hours. _And everything went fairly smoothly yesterday, outside of one serious brush with danger._

By the time they were done eating, the Doctor was desperate to ease the unnatural tension between them. He cast his gaze around the room, breathing a sigh of relief when he laid his eyes on _Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ , which they'd been reading together in the evenings. He wiped his hands and picked up the book. "Now, where were we…" he mumbled as he opened to the marker. "Oh, right! Arthur Dent is about to meet Marvin the depressed robot."

Rose took the book from him and set it down. "I don't want to read right now."

The Doctor noted her stiff shoulders and unsmiling face. "What would you rather do?" he asked carefully.

She blew out a breath and looked away from him. "Look, you don't need to do this," she said. "Actually, I wish you wouldn't—it isn't fair."

The Doctor froze at the unfamiliar note of bitterness in her voice. "Do what? What isn't fair?"

"Pretend you want to be here with me."

"What?" The rock that had settled in his stomach earlier was joined by several more, making him wish he'd eaten less of the rich cheese. "Rose, no… That's not… How could you think I don't want to be with you?"

Rose snorted. "You've gotta be kidding me," she said incredulously. "Even you couldn't be so dense that you don't realise you ignored me all day yesterday."

"I didn't ignore you," the Doctor said, but his protest was weak as a hot rush of shame swept over him.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Right. The only time you looked directly at me was when you were telling me what to do—which, conveniently, was usually something that would split us up." She ticked examples off on her fingers. "You told me to stay put while you went through the fireplace to talk to Reinette. You told me to follow the droid and take care of your bloody horse. You told me to go through and tell Reinette we'd be coming to get her."

Her lips were twisted in an angry smile, but the Doctor's hearts fell when he realised the shimmer in her eyes looked a lot like tears. "Rose…" He reached for her, but dropped his hand when she shifted away from him.

"No. You don't get to explain this away. Because I get it now. I thought I was your best friend, maybe even your partner in crime as you saved the universe. Better with two, right?" She blinked quickly, then quickly replaced her mask of anger. "But I'm not, am I? I'm just… what, your pet? Something for you to play with until you get bored and find a more interesting model?"

The words knocked all the air out of his body—not a simple feat to do to a Time Lord.

When he didn't say anything, she set her jaw so hard that he saw the muscle twitch in protest. "I thought I understood when you let Mickey come along. It wasn't like we could tell him no, the way he invited himself along. But yesterday…" She pursed her lips. "I got the message yesterday. You never really wanted _me_ with you. I was just a stand in until you could find someone who could really be your match. Someone more like Reinette—one of the most accomplished women who ever lived." She swallowed hard. "I was just a poor man's Reinette."

Her flat, resigned voice as she spoke the last sentence finally jolted the Doctor out of his stupor. Rose was the best—as he'd told Adam over a year before—and to hear her so obviously doubting her value killed him.

"You are not a poor man's Reinette," he said firmly. "I'd say it's the other way around, but that implies she could replace you, if I ever lost you."

Rose shook her head. "This isn't really about her, Doctor," she said, her voice weary. "You weren't listening at all, were you? This is about me 'n you."

The Doctor squeezed her hand. "And I'm telling you that the worst part of my day yesterday was when I thought I'd have to live through decades or even centuries before I found a way to get back to _you_. Rose…" He raked his free hand through his hair. "I came looking for you earlier because just six hours without you was too long. I don't know how I would have managed years."

Her hand relaxed, just barely, and she tilted her head and licked her lips. "You… you were gonna come back?"

The soft surprise and uncertainty in her voice wounded the Doctor in ways her anger couldn't. "Rose. How could you think I wouldn't?" he asked.

She yanked her hand free of his, and any softness she might have shown disappeared. "Maybe because you spent all night at a party with Reinette and her French friends and left me strapped to a table, ready to be cut open by insane clockwork droids!"

The Doctor felt the blood drain from his face as he remembered his desperate run back to the TARDIS, the fear pounding in his hearts while he put together a plan to save Rose. His hands had been shaking when he'd concocted the anti-oil, and his singing had the dual purpose of making himself appear drunk, and hiding the tremble in his voice.

"I got there as soon as I could," he said, the remembered fear putting an edge in his words.

Rose narrowed her eyes and shook her head quickly. "Mickey said we were there for hours."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "And Mickey has never been known to exaggerate my failings when he's under stress." She didn't answer that, and he sighed. "I did go to the ball with her," he admitted, "because she practically dragged me there. But I'd only been there ten minutes when the TARDIS told me you were in trouble, and I came right back—in fact, I left her standing on the dance floor." He tugged on his ear. "Well, on the edge of the dance floor, just before the dance started," he amended, suspecting this was a night when only absolute honesty would suffice.

She blinked, and some of the hostility in her eyes turned to uncertainty. "But your tie… and the banana daiquiris…"

He suddenly saw the scene from her perspective. If she'd already thought he'd left them there for hours when he'd staggered into the room looking drunk… And coupled with the undeniable fact that he had actually been ignoring her most of the day…

"Rose," he said slowly, "I am definitely an idiot. An idiot and a fool and you can call me any other name you want. I shouldn't have assumed you would understand my plans when I never explained them to you."

She leaned back in the corner of the couch, looking at him challengingly. "Oh, is this the part where you give me some kind of speech that explains everything away so I realise you actually aren't a wanker?" she said, her voice acerbic.

The Doctor winced and tugged at his ear. "Only the simple, unvarnished truth," he insisted. "And first of all, I was not actually drunk, Rose." She rolled her eyes, and he held his hands out pleadingly. "Come on, you know I don't get drunk on alcohol."

She seemed to waver for an instant, but then she shook her head. "You did a bloody good job acting drunk for someone who was sober."

"I acted drunk so the droids wouldn't think I was a threat," he told her. "Every single word I spoke to the droids—the whole schtick about being drunk and partying with the French and inventing the banana daiquiri—it was all an act, so they would let me get close enough to save your life."

He held his breath, and finally, Rose's shoulders slumped as the anger drained out of her. "Doctor… Why didn't you just _tell_ me all of this?" she whispered.

Her voice was hoarse, and the Doctor felt a dull ache in the pit of his stomach when he realised she was trying to hold back tears. There was anger towards Sarah Jane, too, for telling Rose that some things were worth getting her heart broken—he was not worth Rose Tyler's tears.

"I thought we were partners," she repeated. "Partners tell each other things. They don't order each other about, they don't swan off alone without any sense of sharing a plan, they don't swish in pretending to be pissed and expect the other to pick up on their act and play along with it, and—" She swallowed hard. "And they don't leap through magic mirrors without explaining their plan to reunite, especially not if they've already said there'd be no way back.

"You promised you'd never just leave me behind, like you did Sarah Jane, and then you just left me—and not even at home, or in Aberdeen. You left me on a bloody spaceship in the 51st century." She swiped angrily at the tears that had fallen from her eyes. "You made me feel like I was disposable. Replaceable."

"No. No, Rose." The Doctor shook his head. "You are absolutely irreplaceable. We're partners—the Doctor in the TARDIS with Rose Tyler."

A ghost of a smile finally appeared on Rose's face, but her gaze was serious when she looked into his eyes. "Then you've gotta treat me like a partner," she told him. "You can't just… order me around and pretend I don't exist whenever something is bothering you."

He stiffened in shock, and Rose shook her head.

"You forget that I know you," she told him, a hint of reproof in her voice. "Something got under your skin, made you want space. I don't know what—I've got my guesses, but I won't make you tell me. Because in the end, it doesn't matter. What matters is that next time, you talk to me instead of treating me like I'm invisible."

Each new way Rose found to describe how the way he'd treated her had felt stung, because he knew they were deserved. If only she knew he'd pulled back because he valued her _too much…_ But he hadn't acted like that, and she had no way of knowing.

Rose bit her lip. "So, what do you say, Doctor? Better with two?"

The Doctor took a deep breath. He wanted to tell her how much she meant to him, to speak the truths they'd left unspoken since the day they met. But the words wouldn't come.

Instead, he shook his head slowly. "No, Rose Tyler," he said as he scooted closer to her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Better with you."


End file.
